CT World War II Veterans Holding Last Reunion

Connecticut-based Iwo Jima Survivors Association is holding its final reunion this month

August 04, 2010|By Susan Campbell

"I've tried everything here," says Daniel A. Vece, Jr., as he tucks into lunch at his favorite Clinton coffee shop. "I've even tried to leave without paying. That didn't work."

He's kidding. Vece is pushing 86, wearing his Iwo Jima Survivor gimme cap, and cutting up. He served with his fellow Marines in one of the bloodiest battles of World War II, and came home victorious to the girl he loved. They married and raised three children; he ran an appliance store, and served as Clinton's first selectman and fire chief. He is one of those small-town guys without whom small towns would dry up and blow away. He also helped create the Iwo Jima Memorial off Route 9 on the New Britain-Newington line. In 2009, he was inducted into the Connecticut Veterans Hall of Fame.

But it's last call for the thinning ranks of Iwo Jima veterans.The Connecticut-based Iwo Jima Survivors Association is holding its final reunion later this month at a reservation-only event in Branford.

There'll be a candlelight service the day before at the memorial, and state Department of Veterans' Affairs commissioner Linda S. Schwartz wants to fill the park.

"I was heartbroken to think that these heroes of my childhood would be getting together for the 'final' reunion," said Schwartz. "They do not wear their victory on their sleeves. They are quiet men who walk the streets of Connecticut."

About that "final" part: Vece says some veterans will still gather over dinner occasionally to, he said, "win the war again." But an era is winding down. The organization started with more than 800 members. Vece thinks there may be 200 or so alive now, but only 40 or so show up at memorials.

Like his compatriots, Vece left the only home he'd ever known as a high school junior who thought he was bulletproof. Though his mother was college educated and a concert pianist, he suspected he would not do well in college. Once he enlisted, his father, one of Clinton's police officers, told him to do his best.

In the Corps, he learned pride and dedication in an all-male world, where 35-year-old drill sergeants were called "Pop." Vece didn't know he was going to Iwo until the ship was seven miles offshore. The 19-year-old corporal did know it was important to take that island. "We were losing too many planes," he said.

They didn't tell war stories then —- outside of veterans groups —- so it was up to news reels, historians, and that iconic photograph to tell how fortified was the island, how great the human cost for both sides.

After the war, Vece served a year in Nagasaki, where he met an American-educated professor who told Vece that anyone even moderately familiar with American culture knew the country would be invincible if attacked.

The candlelight service starts at 6 p.m. on Aug. 14 at the National Iwo Jima Monument on the east side of Central Connecticut State University's campus, just off Ella Grasso Boulevard. People should park at the school and take the shuttle bus.